Passage
by The Die Hard
Summary: Clark is just learning what it means to be Superman when he says goodbye to a friend, and embraces a Dream. Dylana and company also appear in Lessons.


Dylana  
  
Timeline: a year or so after Clark puts on the costume.  
  
Disclaimer: Doctor Dylana Cartak and her many relatives, Baron John, Lake, Nicole, Wynter, Little Sky, and any other Specials sneaking around (they first bothered Clark in "Interview" and "Lessons"), all stalk my own head. Everybody else belongs to somebody else. Don't sue my cats.   
  
Now come join the family picnic already. Stay away from the potato salad.  
  
The big car drove up to yells of "Grandma! Grandma! GRANDMA!"  
  
The middle-aged woman smiled as she got stiffly out of the limousine. The Cartak family reunions (including all the various relatives of all three husbands, each of whom had agreed on sharing her name after her first Nobel nomination, and still got along after the necessary divorces) were never short of noise, but the scale had gone exponential since the next generation had come along. "Easy, kids, cool it! I'm blind, not deaf."  
  
She was swarmed by a small nuclear explosion of four-to-fourteen year olds before she could get her feet under her. They would have broken her prematurely disintegrating bones (or done themselves a serious injury from her increasingly uncontrollable electrical potential) if the strong young man had not darted out of the limo behind her at near-invisible speed and lifted her off the ground, laughing. "You weren't kidding about your family. Are they always this enthusiastic?"  
  
"You ain't seen nothin' yet, Kal. Wait until they figure out who YOU are. Which should be in about ... five, four, three, two..."  
  
"SUPERMAN! GRANDMA! THAT'S SUPERMAN!" The noise level went up to where it would easily have drowned out an atomic explosion. With an earthquake thrown in.  
  
"How did they know?" Clark muttered into her ear, as the human Swarm crowded around him and deluged him with sticky hands, demanding autographs and demonstrations and diamonds made from coal. "I'm not even wearing anything red or blue."  
  
"More's the pity, because I hear it looks really good on you. Then again, if my daughter or one of my sons or any seventeen of their cousins are here yet, that's probably just as well. They'd trip you and molest you on the spot."  
  
"Hah. Super strength, remember?"  
  
"Hah. Jumping genes, remember? No telling which of them have what talents. Don't arm-wrestle with Mark, though. I suspect he'll be able to do the radiation thing sooner or later. He's already doing his science project on high-gamma range detection."  
  
Clark sobered quickly at that and shifted Dylana to a more comfortable carrying position. Even aside from his respect for the scientist, he definitely did not want to upset any of her family members who might be able to generate kryptonite radiation.  
  
Behind him, a teenage boy was crawling out of the car. "I'm gonna be stiff for days," Wynter complained. "How can you stand to sit still for that long?"  
  
"Practice, Wart, practice. Go say hi to Killian, I can tell he's over by the food. You two can discuss that next stupid interstellar probe attempt to your heart's content. Just don't start talking in Kryptonian, Killy only has it second-hand, and he'll pester you for translations."  
  
"It's not a stupid probe!"  
  
"Yes it is, and you know it. If they're not going to spend the money to do it right, why bother to do it at all? Voyager and Pioneer, now THERE were out-system probes. And Galileo! What a way to go. This underpowered crap they're launching today, they may as well be launching toilet-tissue tubes."  
  
Doctor Dylana Cartak looked, all of the sudden, very tired. Clark glanced down at her, worried. He knew -- he had known for awhile now, ever since she had helped him "embrace his destiny," that Dylana did not have long to live. But it still hurt, and scared him some, to have to watch it happening. "Are you okay? Can I get you something?"  
  
The not-really-so-old woman in his arms smiled up at him. "You're such a good kid. I wouldn't object to a beer, but mostly I was just thinking of the good old days. When we went to the moon. When we reached for the stars. When we had a Dream. A real one."  
  
Clark could have sworn he heard a hitch in her voice, and bit his own lip to keep back any sound. Dylana had been -- and was still -- one of the best and the brightest, working towards the future. She had made a mistake that was costing her decades off her life, but it was not her mistake that had cost humanity so much of its potential, so much of what it could have done by now. He suspected that disappointment in those in power, who should have been reaching for the stars by now, was hurting her more than the lethal nerve damage.  
  
"One beer, coming up. Dark and not in a can, right? And I'll take the top off for you. No telling what would happen if you started playing with magnetism around the kids."  
  
"Hah. Probably a good thought. I'd hate to ruin two dozen sets of braces." She gestured, and Clark, going automatically to x-ray, looked around and grinned. "My own family doesn't know about plastic? I shall die of humiliation." She pretended to swoon.  
  
Clark added a bit of superspeed to get to the coolers. "Emergency beer alert! If you people could recognize me, then you ought to be able to recognize when your guest of honor is mortified to the point of having the vapors by the use of outdated technology."  
  
A kid no older than Wynter gave him a disbelieving look as he passed over an iced brew. "Sheesh, Kal-El, how could anyone not recognize you? I mean, not that you're a little green man or whatever, but come ON."  
  
A nearly-identical family member hit her brother in the arm hard enough to stagger him. "*I* think he's DREAMY," she declared. "And his EYES glow. And he can FLY. And he's GORGEOUS. And you're a PUNK. So shut UP already."  
  
"And you were born two minutes too late!" her brother responded, triggering a fistfight.  
  
Dylana stopped Clark's automatic attempt to break up the fight with a small chuckle and an unintentionally-electrified hand on his arm. "Don't get in between them," she advised. "They've been known to team up and turn on anyone who tries to keep them from their fun."  
  
"I think I could handle them," Superman said mildly.  
  
"Don't be so sure. Anyway, it's not like they're going to kill each other, or there's anything you could do to keep them from doing it again next week. And it's not like they're the only ones. I can't tell any more, but maybe you can." Dylana fell silent, nursing her beer.  
  
Clark picked up the hint, and glanced around again, concentrating on the more subtle aspects of x-ray vision. It was difficult, not having any references outside of machine-produced pictures, but he was slowly getting the hang of learning to use senses that humans had no name or language for.  
  
His eyes widened. "There must be a hundred people here...."  
  
"Ninety-two, and at least seven more to come. It's an extended family."  
  
"And nearly all of them are -- slightly different."  
  
"Freaks?" Dylana's blind eyes dared him to say it aloud.  
  
"NO!" Clark's voice cut through the wartime-level noise loudly enough for everyone to pause and look in their direction. "Superman said no!" said a dozen kids simultaneously, using his outburst to bolster whatever argument they'd been in the middle of. "No," he said softly, close to her ear. "My parents never allowed me to use that word. You shouldn't either. Shouldn't use it around your family. Shouldn't even allow it to be used."  
  
Dylana stared at him with her mismatched pupils. "They're going to hear it sooner or later, Kal-El," she answered, equally softly. "Better from you or me than from someone who uses it as an excuse to be afraid of them."  
  
Clark swallowed and looked away. He thought he'd gotten a pretty good handle on this being-different stuff in the past year or so. Somehow, Dylana made him feel much too young and not-very-bright again. "Have you, have they, do they know about the Specials?"  
  
"Some do. John's taken the more dangerous ones in for training, though most of my half-mutant cousins will never know about the business end of those like Lake and Nicole. The rest, well, it's up to them. Someday they'll make a choice, and someone will be there to offer them a little help with that choice. We didn't do such a good job with being there for you. You were too good at hiding. I tried to be there for my own more-or-less relatives." She sighed and gestured with the still mostly-full beer. "But of course, even I didn't know what we'd gotten into until way too late. So now we're a soap opera on steroids, divided between genius and severely retarded, weirdly talented and just plain flat nuts."   
  
She raised the beer to her lips. Clark could not help noticing that she didn't drink very much. He wanted very much to check out Dylana at x-ray. But she would have known.  
  
A commotion at the entrance provided a welcome distraction. The war-time noise went up a notch, mostly involving shouts of people's names, as a beat up car disgorged two women and another four children. Clark grinned at Dylana's family estimates.  
  
Dylana stood up and hollered at the newcomers. "Dela! What have you been up to?"  
  
"Blew up a lab," the dark-haired woman admitted sheepishly. "Had to stick around and put out the more hazardous reactions. I think I'll stick to petri dishes."  
  
"Oh hells. What reactants were you using?"  
  
"Just some carbonic acid! No big deal. But there was all the stuff in the cabinets. Once the xylene blew, and some idiot had left sulfuric acid in the same storage area...."  
  
Dylana put her hands on her hips. "I know exactly which idiot did not secure her hazardous materials locker properly. And for the record, even I can see the silver nitrate stains. So you can absorb energy now, or is it still just the basic invulnerability thing?"  
  
"Er, um," Delores glanced at Clark.  
  
"Your powers of observation still suck. LOOK at him."  
  
Dylana's daughter's eyes widened. "Superman!"  
  
"His name is Kal-El, as you well know, you rude brat. Go get cleaned up, and have a full set of excuses ready. Aside from the ones you told the others on your way here, which I will already have taken apart by the time you finish getting the crap out of your hair. Any of your kiddos shown a jumping gene yet?"  
  
"Siggy is psycho-telekinetic."  
  
"Oh gods. Not at Lake's level, I hope."  
  
"Nah, just enough to break glasses. Might just be poltergeist phenomena, even. Though come to think of it, the dogs and cats may as well be the talents, as much as they break."  
  
"I'd rather have a cat with talents. They're easier to train than five-year-olds."  
  
"That's still nothing compared to the amount of glass you broke in Chem 101 alone." Delores wisely took off before Dylana could summon a lightning bolt.  
  
"I see more and more what you mean about your family," Clark said, caught between giggles and the head-shaking of disbelief. "Invulnerability?"  
  
"To everything except stupidity. Del has always been just pretty hard to hurt. It might not be such a good thing that she does research on lethal diseases. Her toughness tends to make her careless." Dylana frowned, no, scowled, after her daughter. "And her first-born is a psi. I wish to hell I could be around to ride herd on that bunch. Call Wynter over here, will you? He and John need to know that there's another one who ought to be watched."  
  
I wish I could be around....  
  
Clark bolted at way past human speed for where Wynter was jumping up and down and shouting with eight other people. "Sorry to interrupt. Come quick. This is important."  
  
"What is it, Kal-El? Clark?" Wynter enforced a human pace on him, which would have been frustrating, except that Clark needed the time to swallow the lump in his throat.  
  
"Dylana. She's, well, we were talking to her daughter. And one of her grandkids might be a Special, and said you and John ought to know. But what she said," Clark swallowed, the bright sunny day going gray and cold around him, "What she said.... She, uh, wants you to know ... because she says she isn't going to be around."  
  
Wynter stopped. For a second, even at superspeed time, Clark thought it was because he was shocked, or even just a little surprised. Then Wynter's expression registered. Sympathy? Pity? Not shock or surprise. "Clark," he said gently. "Dylana came here to die."  
  
Superman had been mercifully far away from kryptonite for quite some time, but there was no forgetting what such pain and gut-twisting sickness felt like. "No," he whispered.  
  
"Why do you think we were invited to her family reunion? She wanted us all to be here when she said goodbye. She's just waiting for Lake and Nicole to show up before she...." Wynter fell silent, and gestured towards the sky.  
  
Clark remembered Dylana once saying that she was going to leave by flying as high as she could go. After being a first-hand witness when she commanded a storm-cloud full of lightning to do her bidding, he understood just why she couldn't tolerate the idea of death-bed deterioration. But he had not expected it to be so soon. Or so immediate to him.  
  
Clark had far too much experience with people dying on him already. It got harder, not easier, every time he was forced to taste the dust of mortality.   
  
And for Dylana, he couldn't even beg. She would lose all respect for him for such a violation of her dignity.  
  
The hand that touched his arm crackled. It would have hurt anyone else. "Clark," the blind scientist said softly. "If your blood pressure drops any lower, you'll pass out. You don't want Superman fainting in front of a bunch or kids, do you? Pull yourself together."  
  
"Dylana, you.... I...." He blinked the haziness out of his eyes. "I just wanted to...."  
  
She tilted her head, and Wynter looked on with curiosity. Clark had never been very good at expressing his emotions. Once he'd taken to the public persona wearing blue tights, who could wear a mask of platitudes with a smile that swayed the whole world, no one would have recognized the shy and tongue-tied boy the secretive Specials knew so well.  
  
"I just wanted," he said, steadying his voice to Superman's firmness, "to thank you. For everything you've done. For teaching me to fly."  
  
Dylana's devil-may-care smile finally trembled. "You're welcome," she said, putting a hand to his cheek, caressing the superhero she could only "see" as an energy form. "It was my pleasure. And my honor."  
  
"GRANDMA'S MAKING OUT WITH SUPERMAN!" The explosion was more powerful than at least half the disasters Clark had dealt with. He winced.  
  
"Would you like to take a quick break in the air?" he offered. "I can show you how much better I fly these days. And it would be ... a little quieter."  
  
Doctor Cartak smiled. "I think I'd like that, Kal."  
  
"You're not in costume," Wynter pointed out. "There's probably eleven spysats aimed at the house right now, to determine if a national attack is underway, from the noise level."  
  
Clark twisted his lips at him. "Come on, Wynter, you timed me on the cross-country yourself. Give me one second."  
  
Clark vanished, and Superman appeared in full regalia.  
  
"That was four seconds," Wynter observed.  
  
"I'm not complaining," Dylana retorted, as he lifted her in her arms again.  
  
"GRANDMA'S RUNNING OFF WITH SUPERMAN!!!!"  
  
"WE WANNA COME TOO!"  
  
"You stay on the ground!" Dylana hollered back at them. "Next one of you steals a plane, I will personally fry all your instruments!"  
  
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"  
  
"Forget the spysats," Superman chuckled as the noise retreated. "Every earthquake detector from here to California is probably pointing towards your retreat here."  
  
"No doubt," Dylana sighed. "Watch one of the kids be ABLE to trigger an earthquake. We should have brought Little Sky to check them out."  
  
Clark kept his mouth carefully shut on that one. Little Sky was in the Philippines, doing whatever the more-or-less human daughter of Mother Nature could do to mitigate the damage that Gaia's power had caused with the storm and floods. Neither of them would have been able to bring themselves to cost thousands of people their lives just so that two old friends could say goodbye. But that didn't make it hurt any less.  
  
"Does she ... know?" he finally said carefully. Did the younger wielder of lightning get a chance to tell her mentor just how much it meant, to have someone who was even a little bit like her, someone who could understand what it was to touch the sky? Had she known that their last farewells would be their final ones, and how much would be forever be left unsaid?  
  
Dylana relaxed in his arms, smiling. Clark was suddenly reminded of the way he used to be carried, when he was a very small child. Not a very good analogy, for a woman who'd just been nominated for the Nobel prize for the third time. And who would probably receive it this time, for her work on neurophysics. Posthumously.  
  
But the truth was, she weighed less than a baby to Clark. Maybe it was his increasing strength. Maybe it was her increasing frailty. Either one bothered him, scared him. She had taught him to laugh aloud and strike back at the gods, and she was tiny and weak in his arms.  
  
"Clark. Or should I call you Kal-El when you fly? Skylark can feel life right down to the molecular level. Of course she knows. She's known for years. She promised to make a rainbow for me. But then, she makes a rainbow for all those she can't save." Dylana sighed, and snuggled into him. "You're right. You've gotten a lot better at this flying business."  
  
"A lot of practice. And a good teacher." Clark steadied them out at about a mile up, where the air was still relatively warm and breathable for Dylana. "Did you ever ask, you know, Cyrus, if he could..."  
  
"Kal-El. Stop right there. My IQ is still about twice yours, and Wynter's is a good ten times both of us put together, and we are relaxing and watching the sun go down. I will NOT have you spoiling the mood with questions I asked and got answers to a long time ago." She looked away. "What I did, I did to myself. There are some things ... you just can't change."  
  
"Sorry." Clark hovered and adjusted his position so she could face the sun. "What do you see when you look at the sun?" he asked after a minute, thoughtfully.  
  
"Hm. Darn good question. I could tell you in pure science, but that's not very poetic. I see the storms, in their magnetic fluctuations. I see the spectrum of hydrogen thermonuclear reactions. I see -- actually, more like feel -- radiation in every wavelength, in colors no one else knows to give names to. If I reach out -- " she did so, and Clark felt it tingle through his nerves -- "I can feel old Sol as if he were alive, raging, burning, glorying in his power, not caring that the power is ultimately killing him. Appropriate, no?" She smiled into the afternoon sun. "What's a billion years to a star? What's a lifetime to a human? I've had a wonderful, glorious lifetime, Clark, and I don't regret a minute of it. Well, maybe a few, but as the guy said on Murphy Brown, if you don't regret a few, then you haven't lived."   
  
She turned her face to him, even though Clark knew that she "saw" in all directions through her internal electromagnetic sense, regardless of which way her face was aimed. "What do you see when you look at the sun, Superman?"  
  
Clark wasn't sure if the impersonal name was a distancing mechanism, or a form of teasing. He decided to take it as the latter, and gave her a very very light hug. "I see life," he said softly. "Power. Joy. A star that accepted me when my own was gone. A beacon in the endless dark. The fires of creation, that allowed such a wonderful world to be my home."  
  
Dylana continued to gaze at him. "No wonder you made reporter for the Planet so fast. A Kryptonian poet. Who'd'a thunk it? From what I saw, Krypton's poetry was mostly on the order of war technology. Maybe you got that bent from Jonathan and Martha."  
  
"Well, mom, yes," Clark said distantly, thinking. Losing Dylana was an unpleasant reminder of the other losses he was going to have to face sooner or later. People died, yes. He'd had that rubbed in his face. He'd ignored the gray in his parent's hair, the deeper lines in their faces, every time he went home. He'd never faced the fact that some day he was going to go home to an empty house, a home that was no longer there. That someday, the alien child would be truly cut loose in a world that was his only by his own choices.  
  
Dylana ran her hand through his hair, making it stand on end. "Kipling," she advised.  
  
"...What?"  
  
"Kipling. Much more appropriate for a Superman than Frost or Shelley."  
  
"Says who?" Clark took her hand and placed it on his lips so she could feel his smile.  
  
"Says the woman who wanted to be superhuman since she was two. And finally succeeded. Though not exactly according to plan. Wonder if I subconsciously did that on purpose? Maybe if I'd known about those green rocks of yours beforehand...."  
  
"Whoa, don't even go there! You might have ended up one of the crazy meteor freaks that I kept having to beat up. Or worse, you could be contaminated with the stuff yourself, and I wouldn't be able to get within ten feet of you. Much less go flying with you."  
  
"Right. Nope. We wouldn't want that." Dylana turned her face to the ground, and Clark wondered if she were looking away from him for some reason, until she pointed. "Look, we have company. I'd recognize that driving style anywhere."  
  
So did Clark. Only Lake Anderson drove as if she thought she were as invulnerable as Superman. It was a good thing that her partner Nicole actually was.  
  
"I suppose we should go steer them away from the potato salad," Clark said heavily. Wynter had warned him that she was only waiting to say goodbye to those last two friends, before she went skyward for the final time.  
  
"Yeah, not that it would bother Nicole, and it would serve Lake right. Clark...."  
  
For a moment, blind eyes met steel ones, and Clark wasn't sure he wanted to read the expression on her face. Dylana took the decision out of his hands, and mind, when she wrapped her energy-sparkling hands around his neck and bent his head towards hers.  
  
The kiss was long, and deep, and electric in more ways than one.  
  
She pulled her head back, and her eyes were glittering with more than just out-of-control electrical fields. "Thanks for...."  
  
"Everything." Clark hushed her by returning his lips to hers. "Yes."  
  
"Look who's finally decided to crash the party!" Dylana shouted as they returned to the ground. "What took you two so long? We're almost out of beer!"  
  
"No, we're not," one of her younger nieces corrected. "Sammy went to go get some more when aunt Dela showed up."  
  
"Sammy's only sixteen."  
  
"Doesn't matter," the ten-year-old smirked as she walked off, and Dylana groaned. "Oh, gods. Another budding criminal. Wynter! Keep a lookout for the kid coming back with the beer, and take pictures. Might be illusionist talent, or mental control, but John's going to have to know about it before the life of crime gets too attractive."  
  
Lake came over to them and hesitated, then hugged Dylana, a gesture so uncharacteristic of the murderous psi-fire covert agent that even Superman's eyes went wide. "We were in Egypt. Took a little while to commandeer a flight. Glad we could make it in time for the picnic. Though the potato salad is long overdue for a burial."  
  
"I'll do the honors," Nicole added, more subdued that Clark had ever seen the artificial woman (who he was pretty sure was still stronger than he was). "At least it probably won't make my skin turn colors if I accidentally get any on me. Is that what happened to Dela?"  
  
Dylana laughed, then hugged her too. Even Nicole's artificial hair stirred from the contact. Clark understood, then, how Dylana had known she was dying. The lightning was seeking her, inside and out, and she could no longer deny the call of its power. "No, Delores blew up another lab. Maybe John should put her on his most-dangerous list after all. And her first kid is a poltergeist. These family reunions get more insane every year."  
  
"It probably didn't make things any more laid back that you brought Superman along," Lake said calmly. "Hello, Kal-El. You've been making quite a name for yourself. We're all happy for you, though it's hard to believe you've gone so public."  
  
"It's the costume," Clark said, blushing a little. "Mom said it would keep people's attention away from my face. Make it harder to be recognized."  
  
Nicole and Dylana both looked him over with a suggestive ogle as only two women who "see" beyond the visible range can do, and exchanged a low-five and snickers. Lake allowed herself an appreciative smile. "Well, your mother's never been wrong before. I suppose we can trust her judgment now."  
  
"Cl- Kal showed up in his usual plain old farm clothes," Wynter added, coming up behind them. "Took Dyl's grandkids all of thirty seconds to recognize him. At least half of them have either her energy sensory capacity or the brains she claims to have. Glad you could make it before we had to take a flamethrower to the potato salad. Since you're both here and not covered with someone else's blood, I'm assuming the assignment wasn't a total disaster."  
  
"Long story, and debriefing not for public consumption, but yeah, it turned out all right in the end. We couldn't have left otherwise." Lake's ice-blue eyes rested on Dylana, troubled, as close to apologetic as she could get. "You understand that."  
  
"Of course I do." Dylana nodded towards Lake, but didn't try to touch her again. She had actually hurt the psi-fire when they hugged, she knew, though Lake would never admit it.  
  
"Well, we did make it, that's all that counts," Nicole said a little more loudly than necessary. "Now, since you invited us to a family reunion, don't you think you oughta introduce us to the family? Like this little bratling here?" She indicated a small boy who had come up behind her and was glaring at her suspiciously.  
  
"You're not human," the child accused.  
  
Clark swallowed. Lake raised her eyebrows. Dylana sighed. Nicole and Wynter laughed. "Nope, I'm not," Nicole said, in a fake confidential tone. "Are you?"  
  
"Of course I am!"  
  
"Oh yeah?" Nicole leaned over and winked evilly at him. "Can you prove it?"  
  
"Um..." The boy toed the ground and glared. "I don't have to!"  
  
"Oh, yes you do," Dylana lectured severely. "You have to be able to at least try to prove EVERYthing you claim. Unless there's a way to prove or disprove it, it's not science. If you don't have evidence you can put together into a theory, then you're just making things up."  
  
"Scientific theory lectures for the children at a family picnic," Wynter said happily. "I could have had a Nobel by now with a mom like you. Dylana, will you adopt me?"  
  
"Not unless you promise to take a shower and comb your hair every day."  
  
Wynter actually managed to blanch. "Never! Well, not for another few years anyway."  
  
Silence fell. Everyone there knew that "years" was out of the question for Dylana.  
  
"Well, maybe once I get interested in girls," Wynter amended. Clark had to chuckle.  
  
"I'll draw up the papers, on that condition," Dylana offered. The smile they exchanged was beyond the ability of the others to really comprehend, the deep, fast understanding of people whose minds are far more than normal human, the acceptance of two who knew what they were losing -- and what they had once had, just from being together.  
  
Clark understood that all too well. To have someone else who understood.  
  
"Girls are yucky," opined the youngster.  
  
"Can you prove that?" Dylana said mildly. Clark stifled a howl.  
  
The boy glared and ran off. Dylana chortled, then suddenly sagged. Clark and Lake both caught the exhaustion that crossed her face at the same time. Their glances flicked across each other in less than a tenth of a second, then Lake pulled a chair over without touching it while Clark put his arms around Dylana and helped her down into the seat.  
  
"I vote that Nikki go nuke the salad and prevent Sammy from being arrested for underage drinking," Lake said in that neutral, artificially uninflected, perfectly harmless, thoroughly deceptive voice. "Superman can round up the kids and start a campfire. The cape tends to attract attention among the young ones, and a little superspeed and heat vision ought to put them in a good mood. Wynter, why don't you go print out the paperwork? John ought to be thrilled to finally have you belong to somebody else."  
  
Clark felt a sudden coldness in his gut at that. He'd never even bothered to ask who the "parents" of the young, violently mutated Specials were. Had they grown up with no home except for the laboratories, no authority figure except the centuries-old Baron? Having to live a lie in Smallville, even to his friends, was infinitely preferable to such isolation.  
  
"Sure, Superman can handle that," he said in that recently-learned, pretentiously-authoritive voice. "Lake, you want to show me where there's some dead wood I can build a fire with? And some marshmallows?"  
  
"Certainly. We can commandeer a few kids to carry the kindling," Lake said mildly.  
  
"Oh, and won't THAT look great on the nightly news. Superman has children slaving for him." They walked over to a huge wood pile and selected pieces, tailed by what seemed like four million children in Brownian motion, most of them attempting to climb his cape.  
  
"Are you kidding? Any of these kids would fight to be in the same video frame with you. If you're not careful, they'll be licking your boots. Speaking of which, at least you picked a consistent color scheme, without tacky white boots."  
  
"I heard that!" Dylana hollered.  
  
"You were intended to. Kick off your shoes -- Dylana. Stay awhile."  
  
Dylana stared in their direction for a long minute, took a deep breath, and slowly took off her insulating boots. Her nod pointed at Clark and Lake, neutral, almost amused. Clark remembered that the top-level Specials put a good deal of energy into hassling each other. One of the teasings that was guaranteed to get you a lightning bolt in the butt was calling Dylana "Dill." Lake, who was afraid of nothing this side of a galactic implosion, and that only because it might hurt her friends, had refrained from using the teasing insult.  
  
Clark, at least, got the message. Dylana wasn't planning to put her shoes back on again.   
  
"Found the marshmallows!" yelled an eight- or nine- year old boy.  
  
"You did not! I did!" The girl held up at least ten bags, as if if prove her point.  
  
"Did not! I did!"  
  
"Did too! You did not!"  
  
"The Cartak family," Lake observed, "strikes me as a good reason for sterilizing all mutants. An average IQ of two hundred, and not one of you can cook."  
  
"Oh, come off it, Lake," Wynter said scornfully. "You're just too old-fashioned. Me, I see possibilities everywhere. Of course, most of them involve moving to Las Vegas."  
  
"Don't even go there, Wart. I catch you with Sengal, I will personally fry your laptop."  
  
Wynter crouched down next to the doctor's seat, and even to Clark his expression was completely blank. "Dylana. You see exactly what I do when you look at her."  
  
"Kid, you haven't gotten your first Nobel yet. And last I heard, your vision is straight normal human. And one state over, you'd be in jail for even thinking about it."  
  
"She has your brilliance. And she has the metagenes. Maybe as extensive as yours."  
  
"Which isn't much. Look where it's gotten me."  
  
"It kept you alive."  
  
That, Clark thought, was exceptionally cruel. But Dylana only inclined her head. "There is that. And it gave me a great deal I would not have had, with a normal life."  
  
"The lightning?" Clark wondered if even that were really worth it.  
  
"Friends." She smiled at him, blind, seeing him the way no one else could see him. "Special friends. People who understand what it is to be unique. And accept it."  
  
Oh. Clark blinked, knowing exactly what she was talking about. To have others, not exactly like him, but with him, understanding him. Friends. Special friends.  
  
He felt Lake's eyes on him, and realized that she and Nicole and Wynter were all watching him. "It's the costume," he said lamely. "Tends to attract attention. I got to meet Wonder Woman, after all."  
  
Even Lake laughed aloud at that one. He was saved from further embarrassing attempts at self-explanation when the Swarm of next-generationers gathered around them, after having set handfuls of assorted oddments over the fire to warm or cook (or, more likely, Clark thought, burn to a cinder, and he was probably going to be asked to use heat vision more than a few times just for show), and settled themselves in a campfire-circle around Dylana's chair as if she were the center of the fire. Looking around, Clark thought, that was an apt analogy. Dylana Cartak was the center of a family whose members were not afraid to be different.  
  
"Tell us a story, grandma," several of the younger ones demanded, a chant that was taken up by everyone except Lake. One of the older boys looked around, and added, "Uh-oh. Better make it a good one, grams, somebody called the cops already."  
  
Startled, Clark followed his glance to the plain car pulling up, and wondered why the boy thought it was police. He went to x-ray automatically -- it was getting easier and easier, these days -- and grinned. "I'm not going to ask how you knew he's a policeman, but I think Detective Jones was invited."  
  
So, Clark thought, as his vision flickered outward, had Lex been. He wondered how many of Dylana's oddly perceptive grandchildren knew that the billionaire was parked just the other side of the house, unwilling to intrude on the unusual family's last get-together with their famous grandmother, but there, in his own way, to say goodbye.  
  
Superman had been angry when he found out that Lex would be there. Lex, in turn, had been truly furious with Clark, actually cursing at him. "What business is it of yours?"  
  
"She's my friend! We don't need you sticking your nose in and causing trouble."  
  
Lex had HIT him, a backhand strike that would leave spectacular bruises on his knuckles. Clark had been too astonished to dodge in time.  
  
"I knew Dylana a long time before you did, super-boy," Lex ground out. "She taught me that science wasn't just cold equations. She taught me to love knowledge for its own sake, not just for how you could turn it to your own advantage. She was a teacher and a mentor and a better friend than you ever were. She never lied to me. You can thank her for your own life, because if she hadn't spent all that time trying to explain to me what it felt like to be able to reach for the lightning and the stars and not have the words to be able to tell anyone about it, I would hate you for what you kept from me. Get away from me before I change my mind."  
  
Clark wondered if he dared face Lex right now. Lex had obviously known the reason for his invitation to a family picnic. Clark hadn't. Lex was staying out of sight, denying himself a personal goodbye to a friend, to keep from distracting attention from the family matriarch and her final farewells. Clark didn't know if he would have had that kind of self-control.  
  
Dylana stood, carefully, making an open-handed gesture that did not invite physical touch. "John. Glad you could make it."  
  
"A long way from Denver, old friend, but I couldn't resist the invitation and the chance to offer you congratulations on the Nobel prize. And to meet your family, of course."  
  
"You're just in time for story-telling. Have the kids bring you marshmallows." Dylana, whose senses far surpassed Clark's in many ways, knew full well that the Martian Manhunter preferred to avoid both meat and open flame. "Don't touch the potato salad. Nikki is still trying to figure out how to dispose of it without triggering a hazmat alert."  
  
The youngster who had glared so suspiciously at Nicole earlier now turned that look on J'onn J'onzz. "You're not human," he accused.  
  
The Martian detective in human disguise shot a fast telepathic request for permission to "check" at Dylana, and received it, so quickly that only Clark saw the change of expressions and only Lake caught the energy exchange. J'onn J'onzz leaned over the boy conspiratorily and winked at him. "No, I'm not," he said in a fake whisper. "Are you?"  
  
The child's face went indignant at the repetition of the argument he'd lost earlier, and he ran off. Half the people around them burst out laughing. "An empath," J'onn said ruefully. "He seems to be handling it well enough, but he ought to have training."  
  
"All my three husbands' side of the family seem to have some mental craziness, and all my brats get the physical. Too bad somebody didn't think to dissect their heads to run a full check." Dylana sat back down, a little too heavily for Clark's peace of mind. "Somebody go get Mr. Jones a marshmallow. Hopefully not burned to a crisp. And bring me a beer."  
  
One of the older children who had gone to fulfill the marshmallow request suddenly yipped as a piece of mystery meat blazed up, and reached for it. Clark got there first and removed it only by resorting to full speed, and gave the kid an odd look. "It's not usually a good idea to put your bare hands in burning grease." The boy shrugged. "Doesn't seem to bother you. Thought I'd give it a try." He sauntered back to the circle, bearing his gifts.  
  
Clark stared after him. Trying something just because Superman could do it was to be expected of five-year-olds, but not usually of high school kids. Except around Dylana.  
  
Wynter was enthusiastically arguing with Killian and J'onn about the asteroid belt probe when Clark got back with Dylana's beer. Dylana gave him a tired smile -- much too tired -- and took a sip. Clark felt his gut clench. Dylana's metabolism burned as fast as his or Lake's. Alcohol had very little affect on her, she drank it mostly for the calories. And the appearance. That she was barely touching it told him way more than he wanted to know.  
  
"The hamburgers are toast," announced the latest returnee from the fire. "The hot dogs should be buried with the potato salad and have a nuke dropped on them. The fish is passable if you don't mind eating nothing but bones. The veggies are a good source of carbon. Who freaking added alcohol to the propane? At least nobody tried liquid oxygen. Though come to think of it, what difference would it have made? We may as well fry the leftover peeps."  
  
A round of "EEEEWW!" greeted that, to which Clark joined in. Invulnerable as his stomach was, he'd managed to get sick on a box full of holiday peeps as a child, and avoided them like green rocks ever since. But he could just imagine what was coming next.  
  
Sure enough. "Maybe if Superman heat-visions them, they'll be halfway edible."  
  
"Don't count on it," Clark advised. "Even I don't eat those things."  
  
"EEEEEWWWWWW!" agreed the appreciative chorus.  
  
"I don't either," the Martian Manhunter said mildly, settling himself beside Dylana with a plate full of marshmallows. "And that's saying something. We cops have to have a lot of sugar on long stake-outs, you know." In fact, the Martian was a junk food sugar addict, having no metabolic defenses against Earth's powerful chocolate amino acids. "But Doctor, I believe I interrupted you as your family was about to settle down for story-telling."  
  
"Oh. Right." Dylana took another very small sip of beer. Clark suddenly felt cold and sick with the conviction that this "story" was, in fact, her way of speaking her last words and testament. He wanted to reach over and hold her hand, touch her, anchor her. He didn't dare. He didn't have the right.  
  
Dylana leaned back, her blind eyes turned to the invisible stars. The hundred-plus children around her fell unnaturally silent, especially for this family. They obviously had figured out what Clark had -- this was her final firelight story.  
  
"The year was 1957. I know, I know, ancient history for most of you. The computers we had at the time took up entire buildings. They'd fit on your wrist today. But still. That was the year that everything changed, that we first understood that we were not confined to this one small planet. When human hands and hearts and minds first sent up a dream that never came down."  
  
"Sputnik came down," objected one of the grandkids, showing off.  
  
"I am speaking of concepts, Michael," she said gently, almost distantly. "Today, we call it the beginning of the space age. But it was far more important than that. It was the beginning of learning to see ourselves as all part of one world." Her unseeing gaze seemed to turn particularly to J'onn and Kal-El. "All one people."  
  
"It was many years later before we saw the pictures of Earth from space, and saw that the boundaries of nations we had drawn with so much blood were meaningless after all. But from that day in October, when the same small beeps were heard all around the planet, in every nation, our world changed. We began to understand how insignificant we were, each alone -- and how much else there was, how much more we could be, when we joined together."  
  
The Martian kept his eyes on Dylana, quiet, absorbing her feelings. The Kryptonian swallowed, beginning to get an idea where she was heading. From the corner of his eye, he saw a pale-headed figure slipping around the house to move just within hearing range.  
  
"It all happened so fast, in that terrible, glorious, war-torn mid-century. Those years when we challenged everything we had ever known, and changed our minds about everything we had ever believed. Go to the library and look up, for example, Kent State, and the Chicago convention. Don't cheat by just clicking on the internet. Do it the way we had to. Feel history in your fingertips."  
  
"We went from toy rockets exploding all over the place, to human beings looking down on all the glory of of Earth, in less than four years. We went from wondering if human beings could even survive the awesome mysteries of space, of the cold and fire and darkness and unfiltered sun, to the day that human beings watched Earth appear over the horizon of the moon like a new creation, to when we walked on that magnificent desolation, in less time than most of you have been alive."  
  
"Even those who paid the final price, on the ground or in the air, whether their names are ever remembered or not, took us one more step on the path that never ends. Towards a future of unlimited hope and potential."  
  
The sky darkened from cerulean to cobalt as Dylana spoke softly, reminiscingly, compellingly, of what to her (and J'onn) were immediate memories, what to everyone else there was before-you-were-born history. The first stars began to make a wavering appearance. Clark found himself, like most of the others, leaning back and looking up at the sky. Mercury and Gemini and Apollo. And the shuttles and the space station. And Hubble and Chandra and the Gamma Ray Observatory. Stars as even he had never seen them  
  
"You could see it in their eyes, in the way they walked, especially the ones who had been to the moon. They had become part of a wider universe, and were no longer bound to just this one ball of dirt. They had reached for the stars. It didn't matter that they had returned to Earth, that their feet might be forever on the ground. John Glenn waited half a lifetime to see space again. He'd seen more in seventy-odd years than most people ever imagine, but he held out for another chance to touch the stars. And all of us who understand who and what we are hold on to that possibility too, onto the Dream that will never give up, never be over, never come down."  
  
Clark let time slow around him, considering that. Those who had walked on another world, even "only" Earth's moon away, were not exiles, loners, abandoned. They belonged to something greater than one single planet, not less. They were not just limited to the one left behind and the one adopted, whichever their choice lay with, after all their time and work. They had both worlds under their feet, and forever inside their minds, and both were equally their home. They didn't question which was their place in the universe. They embraced it all.  
  
Clark wondered if any of the astronauts would be willing to spend an afternoon with him. They probably had requests like that coming out the ying-yang. Reporter Kent might get the brush off. For the sake of discussing the feeling of being on another world, though, he'd be willing to invoke the costume, and hope they would understand.  
  
"We know now that we have friends who come from far stars." She nodded in Clark's direction, and he fought down a blush. Not fair, Dylana. I should have kept to the t-shirt. "We are obligated, as fellow travelers, to live up to their example. But more, we are bound by our own honor, by everything that life has given us, to live up to our own potential." The sudden increasingly formal, stilted wording suddenly got Clark's attention, and he traded a fast wide-eyed contact with J'onn. Lake gave them both a sharp look. Yes, this was rehearsed. Finalized.  
  
"Out there," and her hand crackled with miniature uncontrolled lightning as she waved towards the sky, "Is the future, the pathway marked when the first beings crawled out of the water and looked up. Looking up is the first step to reaching out. Reaching out is the only repayment we can make to all who brought us this far, from the first struggle of life that appeared, to everyone who gave everything they had just to take that next step." Her voice was starting to give out, Clark realized, and in a fast involuntary flick of x-ray saw that she was fighting just to hold herself together. She had timed it to pretty much the very last minute. "To never going back, never giving up. Never coming down."  
  
He started to ask if he could get her something, a beer, a marshmallow, something inane. J'onn's eyes met his and he got the telepathic message, stilling him: No. This is hers alone.  
  
One of the twins (and they were holding hands, Clark noticed -- so much for the earlier fight) did speak up. "Are we ever going back to the moon, grandma?"  
  
Dylana smiled. "Oh yes. If you lead, the rest will follow. The moon, Mars, the rest of the solar system, the far stars...." Her blind gaze rested on Clark. "It will take all that you can do, but you have to do it. There are no limits, except for the ones you put upon yourselves."  
  
Beyond the firelight, Clark saw Lake and Nicole trade troubled glances. And what was THAT about? If there were ever any two without limits.... Oh. Right. That was the problem. What more could they demand of themselves?  
  
"And now, kids," Dylana stood and stretched, as if heading off to bed, "It's time for me to go."  
  
"AWWWW! Grandma!" As if they didn't know what was coming, though Clark had seen ample indication that most of them were not easy to fool.  
  
"Come on, kids, behave. Superman is watching. You want me to tell him to come by every day to make you eat your peas?"  
  
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!"  
  
Clark silently seconded the motion. He'd never been particularly fond of peas himself, even his mother's own fresh-grown ones, even knowing their nutritional value.  
  
"Carried by voice vote. Good night, all. Thanks for coming." She walked out into the darkness beyond the fire, as if to just go get in a car and drive away.  
  
Clark swallowed. The protests were on the edge of his tongue, but he could see the lightning flaring within her nerves. She really had timed it awfully closely. He started to get up and follow, and an invisible hand held him in place. Shock, for one second of paralysis -- holding HIM?!? -- then he saw Lake watching him, and felt J'onn's silent communication.  
  
Let her go. She needs this time for herself. We can't help any more. Give her this.  
  
He gave a small nod of acquiescence, and the psycho-telekinetic hand let him go. But he stood, anyway, suddenly conscious of his costume, bright in the dark and firelight. As if it were a signal, as if he were the leader, the rest stood and turned to face the same direction.  
  
A magnetic wind stirred in his blood, a tide of intangible power. Just beyond the fire, Dylana paused, then threw back her head and raised her arms, stretching, reaching, joyous, as she had on that day when she held him in midair against the unforgiving pull of Earth and summoned a sky full of lightning to teach him to embrace the touch of nothing but air and gravity and the forces of the universe. To accept all that he was, and keep trying to become more.  
  
Slowly, she lifted from the ground -- the comparison to the weighty grace of a spaceship first rising from its tower was inevitable -- then picked up speed, accelerating on magnetic wings.   
  
Faster, higher -- the full power of Earth's magnetic field was ripping through her, and she was defying it with all the strength left in her, holding nothing back and nothing sacred in this final flight, like a rocket burning its last fuel to reach orbit in its ultimate blazing kick. Clark had to blink to readjust his vision. Only Nicole and J'onn also still seemed to be able to follow her, though the kids were all still staring up.  
  
Lightning crackled across a clear sky where the highest clouds would have been, drawn by the ripping twisting magnetic field, but she was already past it. Clark wondered what it would be like, to see all those fields in all their unnameable beauty. Maybe someday he'd learn to. He stared, trying to imprint a memory for later reflection.  
  
To her senses, Dylana had told him, the vacuum of space was an open book, and when she had nothing else left, she wanted to see all that there was to see.  
  
Higher, faster, a streak of shining power -- he had to shift his vision again, and move up to his faster perceptions. Only J'onn was also still following, now. Odd irony, that -- two aliens who had fallen from the sky, the only two able to stand final witness to an all-too-human woman, and her dream of reaching up for the stars.  
  
Light flared suddenly, a bright shimmering rainbow. Clark flinched from it and blinked, his vision dropping back to near human normal. Now it was just a thin, spreading, slightly lighter place, a rippling wave of pale rainbow color against a backdrop of stars.  
  
"Was that an aurora?" one of the younger ones asked softly, into a quiet so deep that the dying fire seemed loud. "No, silly," said another, in a voice just as soft. "That was grandma."  
  
Clark was suddenly aware of being a center, of sorts, of attention, as they held onto him while they tried to comprehend what they had just lost. They were holding onto the costume, of course, in shock and grief and not wanting to believe. And almost as suddenly, he was, for the first time, glad of having become such a visible symbol, of being the one who could speak up and be certain he was listened to.  
  
"No," he said softly, and then forced himself, with the experience of long acting, and the very recent beginnings of understanding of what it meant to be Superman, to stand tall and speak firmly, to be the voice they wanted to hear. The manifestation, not just the man.   
  
He had wondered what he was doing by going so public. And he still wasn't sure that the costume wasn't kind of ridiculous. But now he began to realize why no one saw past the cape and tights, why Superman and Clark were two entirely separate people to the rest of the world. Clark wasn't a symbol. Clark was vulnerable to emotions.  
  
Superman was an icon, and green rocks notwithstanding, Superman could not be hurt. Superman would always be their defense, their shield. It was safe for children, for anyone who couldn't handle the burden themselves, to trust their silent pain and need to Superman.  
  
He held out his hands, taking the desperate grips of the children in his firm warm strength. They didn't need to know that he had learned that gesture of comfort from an old Kansas farmhand. They only needed to know that Superman was there for them.  
  
"No," he said quietly, but this time with the echoing and reassuring power of the strongest being on Earth. Except, he thought, for the one who had just left them.  
  
The cape fluttered behind him in the nightfall breeze. Clark made himself be Superman, for now, and held the children close, sheltering them, as they all stared into the sky. For them, and for his friend, Superman could find the strength to turn their loss into the celebration that she had wanted it to be.  
  
"That was a dream that will never come down."  
  
________________  
  
If you haven't heard of what's called "filksongs" (folksinging for "fans," and don't ask me where the name comes from), I recommend it. Most of it, following Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap), is worse than awful. The remaining ten percent will make you cry.  
  
Hope Eyrie, by Leslie Fish  
  
"Worlds grow old, and suns grow cold,   
And death, we never can doubt.  
Time's cold wind wailing down the past,   
Reminds us that all flesh is grass  
And history's lamps blow out.  
  
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when....  
 Time won't drive us down to dust again.  
  
Cycles turn while the far stars burn,   
And people and planets age.  
Life's crown passes to younger lands,   
Time brushes dust of hope from his hands  
And turns another page.  
  
But the Eagle has landed, tell your children when....  
Time won't drive us down to dust again.  
  
We who feel the weight of the wheel,   
When winter falls over our world  
Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes,   
To a silver moon in the open skies,  
And a single flag unfurled.  
  
We know well what Life can tell:   
If you would not perish, then grow!  
And today our fragile flesh and steel,   
Have laid their hands on a vaster wheel  
With all of the stars to know.  
  
From all who tried out of history's tide,   
Salute for the team that won!  
And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach,   
The wave that carried us up the beach  
To reach for the shining sun.  
  
For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when:  
Time won't drive us down to dust again.  
  
___________  
  
A/N: due to stupid personal stuff, this is probably the last fic I'll write. Purely coincidence that this was the one to go out with.  
  
Touch the stars. 


End file.
